[Nick Gardner]

Hi,

To clear up a little confusion…..The 900 does add flags at 60fps, and the process of making it slow-mo is exactly the same as the varicam. Just wraped 105 days of shooting with the Varicam as the A camera and the 900 as the B camera. lots of stunts and both cameras would do one take at 24 and then one at 60. No tape changes, and no problems at all cutting in final cut. just drop the FRC on the clip and poof – slo-mo. Also did a lot of speed ramping with the varicam, worked out great.

The only thing I didn’t try was shooting at 50fps on the 900 and slowing it down because I would have had to change the system frequency, and I wasn’t sure how that would have worked out. I would sometimes shoot at 32, or 36 fps on A and have B run at 30 for a slightly dreamy quality. I did shoot a few FX shots on the 900 at 1080 24p at the request of the FX editor for the slightly higher resolution, and he was very happy with the results (keying blood splatter -so misty tiny bits).

Don’t fear off speed 900 stuff,

Nick Gardner

[Nick Gardner]

Hi,

Glad to hear that I am not the only one. Changing channels had no visable impact. I suspect that the interference is happening before the A to D conversion because it is a very analouge noise pattern not digital (ie not pixels and banding, hits etc).

I’d be very interested in anyone’s opinion with tech knowlege.

Cheers,

Nick “only 2 more episodes left” Gardner

[Nick Gardner]

Hi,

I get the chinese batts from

https://stores.ebay.com/All-Battery-Inc

I got one that had a bad led display, and I sent it back. They sent me a new one right away, so customer service is better than it should be for such low money. I have a Swit charger and a varizoom charger, both of which are pretty cheap ( I seem to remember around 3-400 bucks). I use these batteries primarily for hand held (powreing the Varicam), the aks battery on my steadicam (powering the monitor, modulus, downconverter, and Follow focus), and as general purpose batts to run monitors, recievers, whatever.

As I said, I use them on the Varicam hand held, which means that they are powering the camera, downconverter,modulus and Bartech, and they seem to last a goodly while. My ACs switch them out for bigger batts when we go to dolly or sticks.

I have the smaller capacity batts, but when I get back to the world I plan on ordering 4 of the bigger $160 batts.

Hope that helps,

Nick

[Nick Gardner]

Yes, 720p cross converted to 1080i is easy, and looks great. You can convert in a computer, thru the 1400 deck, or at a post house. If you shoot 24p, it’s like doing a telecine to video tape from film – it’s the same look.

Cheers,

Nick

[Nick Gardner]

I am on a job right now with a Varicam and and HDX900. We use bartech focus and iris, aja downconverter, modulus transmitter, etc., so pretty battery harsh. We have 4 AB hytron 120s, 6 AB Propack 14s, 4 proformers, 2 12v block batts, and 4 Chinese Lions (cells made in Japan) that cost about $120 a piece.

Obviously the Hytrons run the longest, but they take forever to charge. The Ni-cads (Propacks and Proformers) can deliver the most amps, and they recharge really quikly. The chinese batts (we just call them chinese batteries, they are literally no name brand) kick ass. The complicated charging circutry is built in to the battery, so their chargers can be dumb. If there is a short they shut down and then reset when they are removed, from the offending equipment. They charge fast, don’t act weird like the ABs do some times (reading full and then crashing with no warning, having plenty of volts but no amps etc.), and are so cheap they are practically disposable.

Out of all of these batteries where we go thru at least 10 per day every day for the past 3 months, I have to say that the cheap lions win hands down, bang for the buck. The Nicads are most practical if you need to draw big current, and are cheaper than the Hytrons. The Hytrons are great if you want longer run times, but the difference is negligable if you are pulling big loads.

Hope that helps,

Nick

[Nick Gardner]

Hi,

Actually, I figured it out.In the VF display menu, you can pick whether you want syncro scan in degrees, %, or fractions of a second.

Thanks,

Nick

[Nick Gardner]

Hi,

I seriously doubt panasonic is getting rid of tape. They just released the 900, thats tape based. What frame rates do you want to shoot? HDX900 does 24,25,30,50,and 60. It also does the blured frame 12fps thing, but I don’t think it will shoot actual 12fps. If there is doubt, buy a used Varicam. They can be had for anywhere from 27 to 30k.

cheers,

Nick

[Nick Gardner]

Hi,

If it helps anyone else, here is the info I was looking for.

100 IRE = 714mv
0 IRE = 0mv

Cheers,

Nick

[Nick Gardner]

Hi Todd,

It is a 4×3 monitor, which comes in handy when shooting HD 4×3 for down conversion (say a TV spot). There is an HD zoom button which fills the frame with the 4×3 portion of the frame, also handy for checking focus. The 16×9 HD is letterboxed inside th 4×3 which makes room for the waveform monitor outside of the picture area. It allso has just about every input you could want, HDSDI, component, etc. It recognizes all formats I have thrown at it and SD looks pretty good too.

I can’t say enough good things about the 17″. It looks awsome. I look at an HDCAM air master on that monitor and it looks just like it did when I shot it looking at it on the 8.4″

Cheers,

Nick

[Nick Gardner]

Yes, thats very helpfull. I have a waveform/scopes. I was refering to milivolt levels per chanel in color, etc. There are more factors than Luma, and I was looking for some numbers to punch into the machine for initial set up.

Anyone have any useful information? I guess I can always call Harris.

Thanks,

Nick Gardner